Strange goings on in The Shed….
Earlier in the year, I brought you all up to date with
progress on the Folkestone Youth Project, the Go Folkestone scheme to provide
the young people of the town with a place of their own. It’s one thing to be
given the use of a redundant building in the harbour but it’s quite another to
turn the vision originally expressed by John Burge, the dreams and desires, the
hopes and the thousands of words spoken and written in the past six years into
something concrete but that is exactly what we have done in a matter of weeks in
May and June 2007.
The Trustees of the Charity set up to run the project established a smaller
implementation team and appointed a project manager to handle the day to day
work of refurbishment. Paul Bates, a local builder and developer was selected to
carry out the work and he set to work to complete the building work on phase 1
of the project.
Phase 1 of the project was intended to do just enough work to get the building
into use. Phases 2-4 would follow as the funding allowed and these were intended
to expand the range of activities that could be carried out in the centre. Well,
that was the original plan, anyway, but events surrounding the project were
moving so quickly that the plans were changing on an almost daily basis and the
four phases seemed to blend into one.
Kent County Council had agreed to provide a full-time, professional youth worker
(Emma Flower) to run the activities and she eventually put together a range of
activities for local young people over the summer holidays, mostly taking place
outdoors or away from the centre. In addition, the Trustees were approached by
the managers of the Alternative Curriculum Programme, asking if they could also
use the building to provide their services in return for a contribution to the
running costs of the building.
The Alternative Curriculum Programme (ACP) is run by the County Council to
provide some form of education for those young people who cannot, for a variety
of reasons, fit into the main-stream education system at school. The inclusion
of this group of young people led to a major re-allocation of rooms in the
building and the addition of a “domestic learning centre” – in effect a complete
bedsitter/apartment – where the ACP trainees could learn to cook for themselves
and a whole range of little domestic/DIY jobs that most of us learnt by watching
mum or dad when we were little.
Skills, like changing light-bulbs or sewing on buttons, that we take for granted
but which might be missing if, for example, you come from a single-parent family
or have been through the care system.
In spite of continuous changes to the plans, the building team rose to the
challenge, knocked down a couple of walls, built a reception office for the
youth worker, a canteen and the games room shown in the picture, all within a
week of starting. The rest of the work of providing two more offices, two
information technology suites, a large activity area, a disabled toilet and the
domestic learning centre is expected to be completed by the start of the
academic year in September, in spite of having to solve major structural
problems when providing an additional fire exit from the first floor.
It was only when BT installed a telephone system that we learned that their
records showed that the line terminated in “The Freight Shed”, Folkestone
Harbour and this led to the adoption of “The Shed” as the name of the
centre. A competition will be held amongst young people to design a suitable
logo to go with the name.
Terry Begent
Article from Go Folkestone Newsletter September 2007
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